1.1.10-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club day 10: of revolutions, atheism, and epiphanies Lord, this chapter. I spent most of this chapter frustrated with the Bishop and worried about how he would treat G, whom I like a lot (I’ve got a couple issues with his philosophy, but we’ll get there). Thankfully it didn’t turn out nearly as badly as I’d feared. Whether or not the Bishop actually changed his mind I don’t know, but at least there was thinking going on. Okay, so first off, why is G being atheist treated like some terrible unthinkable thing and yet not two chapters ago we had an atheist senator who appeared to be respected and decently well liked? Is atheism excusable in people who are otherwise decent/in privileged positions? Also, the subtitle of this chapter may as well be: Wherein M. Bienvenu is not quite as accepting and compassionate as he may like to think. I just want to quote this passage because Hugo suddenly switches to writing high drama for half a paragraph and it’s great: Il reconnut avec un certain battement de cœur qu’il était près de la tanière. Il enjamba un fossé, franchit une haie, leva un échalier, entra dans un courtil délabré, fit quelques pas assez hardiment, et tout à coup, au fond de la friche, derrière une haute broussaille, il aperçut la caverne. (He recognized with a particular beating of the heart that he was close to the lair. He stepped across a ditch, crossed a hedge, raised a short ladder, entered a dilapidated vegetable patch, took a few hearty steps, and all of a sudden, past the fallow land, behind a tall bush, he saw the cavern.) Hugo’s language is actually quite poetic in this chapter, but I won’t quote it all at you guys. But I definitely enjoyed it. Question: where did the kid looking after G come from? Do his parents know he’s there? Does he even have parents? How did he come to be looking after G? Is this something I need to write fic about? (Especially since G seems to genuinely care about the kid and vice-versa.) "Le conventionnel cependant le considérait avec une cordialité modeste, où l’on eût pu démêler l’humilité qui sied quand on est si près de sa mise en poussière." (The conventionalist, however, was considering him with modest cordiality, where one could uncover the humility that comes when one is so close to becoming dust.) I just think the phrasing there is interesting. To refer to death as becoming dust instead of, say, ascending to Heaven seems like a deliberate reference to G’s atheism and it also doesn’t really sound like a condemnation of it. I’m not entirely sure how Hugo wants me to feel about this character, though I assume we’re not supposed to dislike him like we are the senator. (The further descriptions of G’s death don’t help, particularly this one: "G. semblait mourir parce qu’il le voulait bien. Il y avait de la liberté dans son agonie." (G. seemed to be dying because he wanted to. There was freedom in his agony.) This strikes me as decidedly enlightened and reminds me vaguely of Mlle. Baptistine from the last chapter being okay with her death and knowing more or less when it will occur.) In other news G and the Bishop actually appear to share extremely similar goals and disagree mostly on the details. This in particular is something the Bishop himself has said more or less verbatim: “l’homme a un tyran, l’ignorance.” (man has a tyrant, ignorance.) That said, this statement is immediately followed by one that both I and the Bishop disagree with, albeit for different reasons: “L’homme ne doit être gouverné que par la science.” (Man must be governed by science alone.) I like science as much as if not more than the next person but I think that the idolization of science and rationality that characterized the revolution (and to a certain extent the renaissance, but this is not about the renaissance) is misplaced and also dangerous. Turning science into a religion is not better than just believing in a higher power. And when you say “conscience is nothing but the amount of innate science we possess” I start wondering how exactly you’re defining science because it’s clearly not the same way I am. But anyway. Cartouche, I have discovered, was a bandit who was killed in 1721 and who was the subject of much romanticization and continues to be to this day. I assume G brings him up because he’s a well known figure and easily comparable to the king, in that his relatives perished for his crimes. "Ah! monsieur le prêtre, vous n’aimez pas les crudités du vrai. Christ les aimait, lui." (Ah! priest*, you don’t like the rawnesses of the truth. Yet Christ liked them.) I do appreciate that Hugo takes time to show us that G is not uneducated. He knows the stories of Christ and he speaks Latin and he’s studied medicine. He’s not some ignorant peasant who can be proven wrong with the simple application of facts or logic. (Which, frankly, may be why he’s not so impressed by the Bishop, especially since he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any kind of class difference between them.) He also makes an excellent point about the limits of human compassion when he points out that not once has anyone come to see him in all the time he’s been in Digne, including the Bishop. Frankly, the fact that he’s not rendered incredibly bitter by the thanklessness of the people he devoted his life to helping is quite amazing. It’s also interesting that the Bishop doesn’t correct G in his assumptions about his wealth. M. Bienvenu could have gone the, “no, I’m not like that, I too give to the poor and don’t profit in the spoils given to me by my status” but instead he turns it into a larger issue, which I suspect is more effective in the long run. It does say something (complimentary) about the Bishop that he doesn’t immediately jump on the defensive when incorrect assumptions about him are used against him. The Bishop’s final point against G is fairly weak (all progress must come from God!) but that’s coming from my perspective as an atheist 21st century middle class girl. I expect for him that is a huge deal breaker and the idea of divorcing progress and morality from God is probably unthinkable. It’s not that he’s proving the senator’s point by saying that one is only moral because God says to be, but rather that he believes that all morals come from God and thus that to try and forge a better world without God’s presence would be doomed from the start. I can appreciate that view point, even if I don’t agree with it. And we end the chapter with the death of G, an uncertainty as to whether or not M. Bienvenu actually changed his opinion, and a pointed comment by Hugo on the nature of certain people when he describes someone as being “de la variété impertinente qui se croit spirituelle,” (of the impertinent variety who thinks themself spiritual). *The form of address doesn’t really translate, and I’m not sure how one typically addresses priests in English when one is not calling them Father thus and so. The French are bigger on titles than English speakers. Commentary Doeskin-pantaloons You have many interesting thoughts, my friend. To your question as to why it’s okay for the Senator to be an aetheist, but not for the Conventionist: it’s been pointed out by a few people that he isn’t, apparently. "The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the infinite is God.” I understood that the problem with the Conventionist was not that he was an aetheist - although this was freaking the Bishop out - but that he was a Conventionist and had connection to the French Revolution. With regards to what you said about becoming dust, rather than ascending into Heaven - I didn’t think of it until I read your comments, but I understand it a reference to the phrase which Catholics (and possibly other Christians) use in Ash Wednesday Mass: “Remember man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” And have no idea how that phrase is supposed to fit into a greater understanding of Christianity, though… Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Doeskin-pantaloons) Interestingly, Hugo calls him an atheist, though I’m pretty sure that’s part of his tendency to use the narrative to draw attention to gossip. “C’était un athée d’ailleurs, comme tous ces gens-là.” (He was atheist too, like all such people). But the very next sentence is a remark about gossip so it’s probably meant to highlight the difference between who G is and how he’s talked about. But yeah, you’re right that that’s probably not the main sticking point, which appears to be more about killing the King than anything else. Oh, okay, gotcha. That makes sense. I still find the focus on the body rather than the soul interesting but I’d forgotten that bit of Christian mythology/belief Alasse-irena Snipped, because I’m actually just wandering past to comment on one thing. Regarding the referencing to returning to dust is, in Hugo’s case, I suspect a reference to the Ash Wednesday Mass - “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” - and hence not as atheist as it might look…